I've said this before, and it's still something I'm learning to adjust to.

My playing days are over. Now I'm the coach.

I need to be able to let go when the games start and let the kids play their way, not mine. I'm not out there competing, battling, having success, or handling failure. Those boys are. And this has been a major adjustment for me as a coach and as a father.

When I played, if something went wrong, I could try and fix it myself. Right there. On the mound. Bear down, make an adjustment, compete through it. That's what I knew for my entire career. Control the process, control my effort.

It's hard to do that from the dugout. And when you try, you're not helping them. You're stealing the experience from them.

Practice is where you teach. Games are where you trust.

Early on, I was vocal. Too vocal at times. In between pitches I was reminding the kids of the situation, where to go with the ball, what to do if it's hit to them, what to do if it's not. I thought I was helping them stay prepared.

What I was actually doing was making them tight.

Too much thinking, less reacting. They weren't playing, they were processing instructions. Kids who looked confident in practice were second-guessing themselves in games because they were so focused on doing what I wanted that they stopped trusting what they already knew.

I had to tell myself to let them play. Let them learn it. Let them fail.

If a kid throws to the wrong base, I'm not going to yell about it from the dugout. I'll pull him aside after the inning and help him understand what happened and why. That conversation is worth more than anything I could shout while the ball is in play.

That shift changed how I run practices too. My practices are loaded with situational reps. Runner on second, one out. Where are we going? Ball hit back to the pitcher with bases loaded. What's the play? I put them in those spots over and over so that when it happens in a game, they don't have to think. They just react.

And you can see it. The kids play with more confidence now. They're not looking at me between every pitch for the answer. They already have it.

Baseball is hard. Especially at a young age. There's more failure, more complexity, more situations to process than most other sports. And only a few kids are actually good early on.

There's no hiding in baseball. It's a team sport, but more often than not you're out there performing as an individual. We don't need to make it harder by micromanaging every pitch from the dugout.

Our job, as coaches and as parents, is to prepare them, support them, and then get out of the way.

It was fall ball. My 9-year-old shortstop was playing up the middle. Late in the game, I was waving him into the hole.

He stayed put. And he gave me a look. Not attitude. Just a look that said trust me, coach.

Two pitches later, the ball was hit right up the middle. He cut across, fielded it clean, threw to first. Inning over.

He came straight over to me. Told me he shifted up the middle because the kid at the plate had two hits to center field earlier in the game. He'd been watching. He'd been paying attention. And when it mattered, he trusted his instincts over what his coach was telling him to do.

He was right. I wasn't.

I was proud of him. Not because of the play, but because in that moment I realized he gets it. A 9-year-old reading hitters and positioning himself on his own. Somewhere along the way, between all the reps and all the practice, he learned to trust himself.

That moment taught me more about coaching than anything I've learned on a field.

Teach in practice. Trust in games.

Help me keep more kids in the game. If you found this helpful, please forward it to another parent or coach.

Thanks for being here. See you next week Inside the Dugout.

-Coach Steve-

Steve Holmes
Founder, Inside the Dugout
2006 MLB Draft | All-American | Youth Coach | Dad